Opera Background
Bel Canto and the Operatic World of the 19th CenturyFelice Romani and the libretto for Il Pirata
Felice Romani was born in 1788 in Moneglia, Italy. He was a sickly child, born to a poor family, but grew up to study law and literature at Pisa. He eventually became a literature professor at the university of Genoa, where he helped compile a huge dictionary of mythology and translated many works from French.
After a period of traveling through Europe, Romani moved to Milan. There he made the acquaintance of Bavarian composer Simon Mayr, who asked him to write two different libretti. The results were admired by many, and Romani was hired as a librettist for La Scala. His operatic career had begun.
The excellence of Romani's clear, concise libretti, noted for their spare poetry and lack of pretense, made him extremely popular with composers and impressarios alike. Many of his texts were set more than once-in fact one, Francesca da Rimini, was set to music by eleven different composers! He worked with all of the most important Italian composers of his day, writing works in almost every operatic genre. Romani-written operas still performed today include Donizettti's L'Elisir d'Amore, Anna Bolena, and Lucrezia Borgia. Romani also had a long and important working partnership with Bellini; he wrote texts for all but one of Bellini's major operas.
Romani was infamous for working on several projects at once; his refusal to put his name on bad material meant that he usually worked behind schedule. Composers, who in Romani's day were under great pressure to work quickly, found this trait both frustrating and nerve-wracking, but still clamored to use his texts. Romani never invented plots or subjects, preferring to adapt his librettos from already existing works. He had a special knack for cleaning up a source's inconsistencies and making it into a well-structured libretto with room for musical development.
Romani wrote over 80 librettos during the course of his career. He died in his home town of Moneglia in 1865.
Il Pirata
The libretto for Il Pirata is taken from a French play, Bertram,
ou Le pirate-which in turn was a version of an English play
called Bertram. Bertram was written by an Irish curate, Charles
Maturin, who made extra money by writing Gothic romances and horror novels.
Maturin's friend Walter Scott was responsible for introducing Bertram
to the world; he recommended the play to Lord Byron as "one of those
things that will either succeed greatly or be damned gloriously."
As a literary advisor to the Drury Lane Theater, Lord Byron persuaded
Edmund Kean, the most famous actor of the day, to star in Bertram.
The play was a wonderful showcase for Kean's capacity for superhuman passion
and rage, and was a great success; it perfectly suited the Romantic tastes
of the day.
The hero of Bertram is even wilder and rougher than Gualtiero
of Il Pirata-and the events in the play are even more melodramatic
than those in the opera. Bertram commits adultery with the Imogene character,
driving her to kill her own child. He also pays a visit to a demon, and
in the final scene seizes a soldier's sword to cut his own throat. Romani
cut much of this outrageous action in his libretto, making his Gualtiero
character passionate but still noble-a role tailor-made for the most famous
tenor of the day, Rubini. Il Pirata introduced the figure of the
Romantic hero-tortured, noble, creative, unable to control his passionate
impulses-- to the Italian opera of the day. Imogene's final aria is also
the first great bel canto mad scene, and provided the model for similar
scenes in Lucia di Lammermoor and Anna Bolena.
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